Hey guys, I've been using Gentoo since 2005, left because of some major problems with the distro and switched to many different distros, right now I'm using Ubuntu. I'd really like to give Gentoo another chance, but I feel kinda lost, since I've stopped using it since 2009. Has there been any significant changes since I left? I dunno, anything? or it's almost the same thing? How stable do you consider Gentoo using its latest stable version? Thanks for any info _________________AMD FX 8350 8-core CPU
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Well, stage3 is now the default way to install, portage (and other parts) have made (huge) steps forward and unstable is stable for me for years. But it's still not holding your hand, so if you need that, your wrong here.

Anyways, welcome back (I should really start counting these 'I am back threads', seems like there are at least 2/week)_________________++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.

I wouldn't consider Gentoo especially stable, but the problems are all upstream,
not in Gentoo. For instance, Gnome themes still crash on a regular basis, as
they have since 2.28, Gnome terminal has started producing a corrupted background
(from 2.30), ath9k wireless drivers no longer cope with hostapd changing the regional
settings, and so on.

I agree with Will: things mostly work. But, if stability is your primary goal, I don't think you're in the right place. I don't think Gentoo will ever be as stable as a well-managed, well funded binary distribution. But, stability isn't Gentoo's primary goal. Gentoo calls itself a meta-distribution; more colloquially, it could be described as a custom distribution building toolkit. If that's what you want, then it's great: best of breed, in fact. If you don't like to tinker and tweak, at least a little, then you may not want to come back.

Gentoo is improving over time. Portage's dependency resolver solves more blocks on its own now—and gives better advice when it can't. The other tools are noticeably better since you left as well.

- John_________________I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

Thanks for the input guys. How stable would you say Gentoo is compared to Ubuntu?

For me Gentoo is more stable than Ubuntu, and slightly less stable than Debian (but obviously more up-to-date).

I think that most problems are either upstream, or created by users themselves (i.e. having an overly complicated setup, mixing stable with unstable and using too many package-specific settings). Of course sometimes we (developers) screw up and something broken gets shipped to stable (it's harder to avoid that with a rolling release; you can't freeze things and test them for weeks/months), but I don't remember any real show-stoppers. Using a lean desktop environment like XFCE has helped in my case (and it also compiles faster and drags less dependencies).

Finally many improvements have been made. Portage is much smarter as already mentioned, and stabilizations at least for amd64 and x86 are managed in a much more controlled and efficient way.

Come one guys, even in 2005, when i made my first Gentoo install, stage3 was the default method.
Of course there was some stage1 guides lurking in to the forum, but the default was stage3 https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-319349-postdays-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html_________________"Dear Enemy: may the Lord hate you and all your kind, may you be turned orange in hue, and may your head fall off at an awkward moment."
"Linux is like a wigwam - no windows, no gates, apache inside..."

I'd really just use stable for everything for the _first_ install, and then add
unstable for only the things you really need (or which are significantly broken).
Bits of Gnome post-2.28 are in fact broken, but they don't cause major
problems - I wouldn't go for Gnome 3.x for a while yet, though.

I've been running unstable for everything for years now... in amd64's case I recall (some time back! ) that 'stable' was if anything less so than unstable, and since jumping I don't think I've looked back.